While I stared at the broken clinks, something flashed across my code like a memory that you couldn’t control. I was witnessing the clink’s construction cycle in a partially collapsed warehouse, where it was put together piece by piece and sent out into the world along with others. There were hundreds of these drones moving around, taking their weapons, then moving out of the hangar area towards the outside world. I was experiencing these images as if they were my own, yet all this seem so recently. I recognized the world that the drone of clinks was emerging into, it was this one.

When Henry asked me something, I simply replied that I was fine and began arming myself for the possible fight ahead of us. Henry and I both carried automatic rifles from the clinks, who were now spewing burst of sparks from their injuries. If we ran into more than two at a time, I feel as if we will be in trouble.

As we made our way through the crumbling city of Paris, we hid as waves of clinks passed on the street towards the direction where they last heard gunfire. It was our best interest to avoid fighting these things in the street where we could be easily surrounded. We passed three patrols of clinks that were no longer heading towards the church, but rather were scouting the area around them. The first group to find the two dead clinks must’ve alerted the others that we were in the area.

Something about these clinks were different from the ones I’ve encountered on the countryside, these were fitted with new armour and were walking orderly unlike the corrupted processors of the others. I’ve seen more clinks in the last hour than I did in the last a hundred years, there must be a reason for this.

We could see the top of the church now just down the street from the coffee shop where we hid, the gunfire had long since passed. Once all the clinks in the area were out of sight, we carefully crawled across the debris on the street towards the front doors of the church.

There were two synthetic corpses on the floor of the entrance way whose internals were sprawled across the ground around them. Inside the cathedral was the sound of marble chipping off from the walls and the view smoke - something was resting at the end of the cathedral resting on the altar.

Lying on the cathedral’s floor was the decimated corpses of clinks were chunks of their bodies. As we walked forward, alert for any threats, we counted seven more clinks that were destroyed by the firefight. I could more clearly make out the figure by the altar, something that looked like a woman.

When Henry was able to see the figure through the smoke, he ran to its side and knelt. I followed behind me and stood behind; trying to assert what was going on.

Upon closer inspection it was clear to see that the woman was an android model like us. The skin on her shoulder was stitched up and glued a few spots.

Henry was still kneeling beside her, removing the rifle from her hands and casting it aside along with his own. When he put a hand before her head, the woman looked up at him and drew a delicate smile on her face. Henry smiled back then directed her gaze towards me. Her artificial eyes opened wider once our eye’s met, she only muttered one word upon seeing me.

“Norman…” she said.

Next Chapter: Chapter Nine: Norman